Linux 6.3 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.3 release

Linux Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.3 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): It’s been a calm release this time around, and the last week was really no different. So here we are, right on schedule, with the 6.3 release out and ready for your enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that something nasty couldn’t have been lurking all these weeks, of course, but let’s just take things at face value and hope it all means that everything is fine, and it really was a nice controlled release cycle. It happens. This also obviously means the merge window for 6.4 will open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests waiting for me to start doing my pulls, and I appreciate it. I expect I’ll have even more when I wake up tomorrow. But in the meantime, let’s enjoy (and test) the 6.3 release. As always, the shortlog […]

Videostrong HC1 Home Care Hub for the elderly serves as Smart Speaker, Smart Home gateway, video phone

Videostrong HC1 Home Care Hub

Videostrong HC1 Home Care Hub is a Smart Home/IoT gateway designed for the elderly that also serves as a smart speaker with 10-meter far-field voice recognition, a video phone with a video built-in camera and speaker, and a 4K Android TV box. The system is based on an Amlogic S905Y4 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor coupled with up to 4GB RAM and 64GB RAM, supports Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and LoRa, WiFi, and Bluetooth connectivity, and offers both HDMI 2.1 video output, and HDMI 2.0 video input. HC1 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905Y4 quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 @ 2.0GHz with Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2 support System Memory – 2GB or 4GB RAM Storage – 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI 2.1 port up to 4Kp60 Input Built-in 1920×1080 camera with 90° wide angle, manual cover, adjustable angle HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60 Audio […]

X88Pro 13 8K TV box runs Android 13 on Rockchip RK3528 SoC

X88Pro 13 TV Box

Rockchip demonstrated the Rockchip RK3528 TV box SoC at Mobile World Congress 2023, and the first Android 13 TV boxes based on the processor are now showing up for sale starting with the LEMFO X88Pro 13 TV box. The device comes with up to 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, supports up to 8Kp25 video decoding, features Fast Ethernet and WiFi 6 networking, as well as a few USB ports, and possibly optical S/PDIF audio output. LEMFO X88Pro 13 (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3528 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor GPU – Arm Mali-450 GPU VPU H.265/HEVC up to 8Kp25 H.264/AVC, VP9 up to 4Kp60 VP8, MPEG-1 MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC1  up to 1080p60 System Memory / Storage configurations: 2 GB RAM and 16 GB flash 4 GB RAM and 32 GB flash 4 GB RAM and 64 GB flash A microSD card is most likely present too Video Output – […]

Rockchip showcases RK3528 TV box SoC and RK3562 tablet SoC

Rockchip RK3528 RK3562

Rockchip showcased some new processors at Mobile World Congress 2023: the RK3528 for TV boxes, and the RK3562 for tablets both with a Cortex-A53 CPU subsystem, but the former comes with a Mali-450 GPU, and the latter with a faster Mali-G52 2EE GPU. Both are clearly for entry-level devices, but I’m a little surprised they didn’t go with Cortex-A55 cores instead. Rockchip demonstrated the new processors in a TV box running Android 13 and a tablet with a 144,506 score in the latest Antutu benchmark as shown below. Rockchip RK3528 preliminary specifications: CPU – Arm Cortex-A53 processor (core count unspecified) GPU – Arm Mali-450 GPU with AFBC compression support Memory – LP4, LP4X, LP3, DDR4, DDR3 Video decoding – Up to 8Kp25 Supported OS – Android 13 Rockchip RK3562 preliminary specifications: CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 2 GHz GPU – Mali-G52 EE AI accelerator – 1 TOPS NPU VPU […]

LibreELEC 11 released with Kodi 20, brings back Amlogic platforms

LibreELEC 11

LibreELEC 11 lightweight media center Linux distribution based on Kodi 20 “Nexus” has just been released with various improvements on x86 and Arm platforms. Kodi 20 was released and available for download in January with AV1 hardware video decoding in Android and x86 (VAAPI) platforms with AV1-capable GPU or VPU, FFMPEG 4.4, Pipewire support in Linux, and a few others. LibreELEC 11 enables you to have a dedicated, and fast booting, HTPC based on a mini PC, a Raspberry Pi SBC, or an Arm-based TV box with all features from the latest Kodi release. LibreELEC 11 supports Raspberry Pi 2 to 4 SBCs, 64-bit x86 hardware, various Allwinner, Rockchip, and Amlogic SBCs and TV boxes with x86, Raspberry Pi, and Rockchip hardware considered more stable and feature complete. LibreELEC 10.0 did away with Amlogic TV boxes and single board computers because of driver issues, but LibreELEC 11.0 brings Amlogic back […]

Amlogic S928X specifications – A penta-core Arm Cortex-A76/A55 SoC with Mali-G57 GPU, 3.2 TOPS NPU

Amlogic S928X block diagram

Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 will soon power some 8K TV boxes running Android TV from SDMC and others, and we now have detailed specifications as a “Quick Reference Manual” dropped in my inbox last night. While like most Amlogic processors, the S928X is designed for TV boxes, the penta-core SoC may end up in affordable yet powerful single board computers with features such as HDMI 2.1a, Gigabit Ethernet, PCIe 2.0 or USB 3.0. Amlogic S928X specifications: CPU sub-system 1x Arm Cortex-A76 core and 4x Arm Cortex-A55 cores in big.LITTLE configuration NEON and Crypto extensions Private L2 cache and unified system L3 cache Build-in RISC-V core for system control processing GPUs Arm Mali-G57 MC2 3D GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, and OpenCL 2.0 2.5D graphics processor for scaling, alpha, rotation, and color space conversion operations VPU Amlogic Video Engine (AVE) with dedicated hardware decoders and encoders Decoding AV1 […]

SDMC DV9286 8K TV box runs Android 13 on Amlogic S928X processor for OTT/IPTV deployments

SDMC DV9286 Android 13 8K TV box

SDMC DV9286 is an 8K TV box for operators running Android 13 TV OS on an Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor with 4GB to 8GB RAM, WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, an HDMI 2.1a port, and 8K AV1, H.265, VP9 video decoding support. We had started to see 8K TV boxes based on the Amlogic S928X processor at IBC 2022 last September, but with few details. SDMC DV9286 announcement brings a few more details such as the GPU used in S928X and which version of Android will be used. SDMC DV9286 (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Amlogic S928X penta-core processor with 1x Cortex-A76 core, 4x Cortex-A55 cores, Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU; 12nm process System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 (up to 8GB option) Storage – 32GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI 2.1a up to 8Kp60 with HDCP2.2/2.3, HDR 10, HLG, HDR10+, Dolby Vision (optional), and HDMI 2.1-specific features such as […]

MECOOL KM7 Plus runs Google TV OS on Amlogic S905Y4 SoC

MECOOL KM7 PLUS Google TV box

MECOOL KM7 Plus is a TV box powered by an Amlogic S905Y4 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor and running Google TV OS based on Android 11 TV OS, instead of just the more common Android 11 TV OS. Amlogic S905Y4 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor was first unveiled in January 2021 for 4K Android TV dongles with AV1 support, but we had not seen many hardware platforms with the process apart from Khadas VIM1S SBC for which we just published a review with Ubuntu 22.04. MECOOL KM7 PLUS specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905Y4 quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU System Memory – 2 GB LPDDR4-2400 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash, micro SD slot Video Output HDMI 2.1 up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDR10+, HRD10, HLG, CEC, HDCP 2.2/2.3 AV port with compositive video (and analog audio) Video Decoder H.265, AV1, VP9, AVS2 up to […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC